With a less-than-inspiring preseason now in the rearview mirror, the Winnipeg Jets must quickly turn their focus to a first month of the regular season that carries great potential for a young team in need of an encouraging start.

The Jets will play eight of their first 10 games on home ice, including Friday against the Los Angeles Kings, and that will give them a chance to get out of the gates quickly, something they haven’t done since landing back in Winnipeg in 2011.

A good start would go such a long way for a team playing in a new conference and new division, hoping for a push into the playoffs after missing by just four points last season.

“Every team wants to get off to a good start,” Jets centre Bryan Little said. “We have a real good opportunity, playing at home this month, to do that. It would be huge for us to get that feeling back at the MTS Centre that we had in the first year … that it was going be a hard place for away teams to play. We need to get back to that. It’s huge having such an advantage at home. We need to definitely take advantage of that.”

The Jets are 36-23-6 at MTS Centre since the beginning of the 2011-12 season. However, their record in Year 1 was much better than it was in Year 2. Last year, they were a middling 13-10-1 after going 23-13-5 the season before.

As they prepared to face the Oilers Tuesday night in the season opener in Edmonton, the Jets were still reeling somewhat from a 1-4-3 pre-season that concluded with a 5-0 loss to the Boston Bruins last Friday.

If they can use the schedule to their advantage and get off to a good start, all that will be quickly forgotten.

New Jets right-winger Michael Frolik got off to one of the best starts in NHL history last year with the eventual Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, who opened the season with a 21-0-3 record.

“What happened in Chicago is something that doesn’t happen often,” Frolik said. “But it’s very important to have a good start. It boosts your confidence right away.

“It wasn’t perfect during the exhibition games, but it’s just exhibition games. It doesn’t count. We learned some things and we’re working on it.”

Decent starts don’t always translate into playoff positions. The Jets went 3-1-1 last season in the first five games, but were back below .500 by Game 9. In 2010-11, when they were still in Atlanta, the Thrashers were 19-11-5 by mid-December and still swooned enough to miss the playoffs.

A bad start was costly in 2011-12, when the Jets lost the first three games and sat at 3-6-1 by Game 10.

The odds are with teams that get off to good starts and are stacked heavily against those that don’t.

“Most playoff teams win about 75% at home and .500 on the road,” Jets left-winger Evander Kane said. “You’re probably in the playoffs every season if you do that. We want to take advantage of all of our home games and use our building to our advantage. On the road, I thought we did a lot better job last year and we need to continue to get better on the road this year. It’s funny how things fluctuate at home and the road. You want to try to be the same wherever you’re playing.”

One player who could really use a good start is goaltender Ondrej Pavelec. He has taken some heat in the off-season over his inconsistency and less-than-average save percentage and needs to be at the top his game all season long.

And a good start for the team might help ease the transition for prized rookies Mark Scheifele and Jacob Trouba, who are being counted on to help bring the team up a notch from a season ago.

One thing is for sure, if October is a lousy month for the Jets, despite having the majority of games at home, the rest of the season will be an awfully difficult mountain to climb.

With eight out of first 10 games at home, fast start is critical for Winnipeg Jets

With a less-than-inspiring preseason now in the rearview mirror, the Winnipeg Jets must quickly turn their focus to a first month of the regular season that carries great potential for a young team in need of an encouraging start.

The Jets will play eight of their first 10 games on home ice, including Friday against the Los Angeles Kings, and that will give them a chance to get out of the gates quickly, something they haven’t done since landing back in Winnipeg in 2011.

A good start would go such a long way for a team playing in a new conference and new division, hoping for a push into the playoffs after missing by just four points last season.

“Every team wants to get off to a good start,” Jets centre Bryan Little said. “We have a real good opportunity, playing at home this month, to do that. It would be huge for us to get that feeling back at the MTS Centre that we had in the first year … that it was going be a hard place for away teams to play. We need to get ba